Badru Kiggundu - King of Stress Absorption

We all have work stress. It may be sexual harassment, Colleague always asking you to cover for them, long working hours to not enough pay. In the media industry – especially print, stress centres round deadlines and hoping the information that Source gave you, is correct and will not require an apology or land you in court.

I have never met BK (below). The little I know about him, I glean from the media and Usual Suspect, who peddles kafunda lugambo.

For work, BK has what I would call a cushy number. His office on Jinja Road, is in an ideal location – especially for lunch. Forest Mall in Bugolobi is a ten minute drive, Africana Hotel is round the corner, Oasis Mall and Garden City, a twelve minute walk and Centenary Park across the road, is a mere case of having to dodge eight lanes of traffic. Not having a personal car is the least of BKs problems, because the taxi will literally drop him at the gate.

I don’t know about the terms and conditions of his contract, because it’s not been leaked on Twitter, but I imagine he tweaked it here and there to read something like this;  

‘BK, for four years, be as if on a chill. Put feet up, make sure Mama Lovisa serves sawa nya with a kindazi, and at the end-of-month, check to see if salary and other perks have been paid. In the fifth year, go see Barbra Mulwana (below) at Nice House of Plastics, (NHP) and buy as many basins, pens, plastic boxes and deliver them nationwide. Once the boxes are filled, count the contents and determine a winner. With that done, go back to the four year routine, sit back and be as if chilling. Put your feet up, make sure Mama Lovisa serves sawa nya with kindazi, and at the end-of-month, check to see if salary and other perks have been paid. In the fifth year, look for Barbra and repeat the whole exercise.

This year, there were some issues. The basins and boxes didn’t arrive at their destinations in time and it’s not Barbra’s fault. If you told her you wanted 100,000 basins delivered to Arua by say February 17^th, she would make sure they were delivered by 10^th. She is that efficient.

But if I can buy a shiny blue basin from the NHP shop next to BAT on Old Portbell Road, take it to kyalo in Ibulanku in the hassles of public transport and deliver it to Uncle before the day was out, surely BK, with all the transportation at his disposal could also have delivered?

Anyway, after a four-and-a-half year chill, the stress that the average worker goes through in a life time of employment, BK went through it one day and over five hours – probably less. And a month down the road, he is still stressed because, when he counted the contents of the plastic boxes, he didn’t use a calculator and thus got his sums wrong that some of the candidates have taken him to court.

Right now, BK looks as blazed and scattered as Doc Emmett Brown was in the Back to the Future movie trilogy and has but himself to blame. If I had his number, I would have called him and told him: “Listen up BK, it was okay to relax for four odd years, but you really had to focus in the fifth and chilled sawa nya, Africana Hotel’s long lunches and made sure those boxes were delivered. Plus 10k to buy a calculator, you really couldn't do that or stolen one from your ten-year-old niece?” 

And I have my concerns because BK could end up a schizophrenic if you walked up behind him and whispered - ‘ballot boxes’ into his ears.

That aside, if he quits, who will be man or woman enough to take on the task of delivering basins and plastic boxes in five years time? Not me.